Towards Reverie Gustave Moreau and the Abstract

English Exhibition 17 October 2018 –21 January 2019

Gustave Moreau Towards reverie and the abstract Vers le songe et l’abstrait

Musée national Gustave Moreau Le Triomphe d’Alexandre. 1 Creating the work

‘Before starting a canvas, Gustave Moreau’s technique is original and very unusual establish the value and compared to his contemporaries. In order to escape colour modes in advance’. realism, he invented a way of painting that questions the Gustave Moreau relationship between line and form, colours and values. In the Le Triomphe d’Alexandre, the use of colour builds and gives structure to the overall composition without defining either shapes or volumes. Colour is distributed as abstract touches over which the figurative outline is superimposed. As a whole, this series of works shows the 1 disassociation made by Gustave Moreau when develop- ing his work; using colour to construct the composition and drawing to define motifs. The final composition stems from the overlaying of the two. Gallery, 1st floor

Alexandre le Grand Oil on canvas; 35 × 35 cm Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau, Cat. 650 Preliminary composition for Le Triomphe d’Alexandre. Only the large coloured masses are pinpointed. Le Triomphe d’Alexandre le Grand Oil on canvas; 155 × 155 cm Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau, Cat. 70 Starting in November 1873, Moreau worked on the iconographic elements required to execute his painting, entitled Porus at the time. He worked on the piece between 1874 and 1890. Moreau developed his work by establishing coloured masses overlaid by drawings, almost like tattoos. 2 The stain that tells a story One of the museum’s quirks is to keep a large number of watercolour and gouache ‘colour tests’ that Gustave Moreau used to test his colours and clean his brushes. We also find similar artefacts among his contemporaries and friends, Delacroix and Chassériau, but less so. Their inscriptions and the drawings that appear in them, like for Œdipe voyageur or Jupiter et Sémélé, sometimes makes it possible to connect them to finished works. These artefacts on paper are sometimes palettes where the artist mixed his colours, and sometimes collections of stains. 2 4 f Some ‘reworked’ sheets have become works in their own f right deemed worthy of being exhibited in the museum. 3 The exhibition features a selection of around 15 actual colour tests, and some figurative watercolours derived Workshop, 2nd floor from them: La Tentation de saint Antoine, Dante et Virgile, Page, Composition non identifiée.

Tentation de saint In this watercolour, St Anthony the Antoine Hermit is in the grip of fantastic visions Watercolour and gouache represented by a whirlwind of colours. on vellum paper; 135 × 24 cm This work perfectly illustrates the Paris, Musée Gustave concept of ‘the stain that tells a story’ Moreau, Cat. 525 Essai de couleur that he shares with, for example, Watercolour, gouache and graphite pencil Victor Hugo. drawing on vellum paper; 28.7 × 23 cm Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau, Inv. 16010-348 On the back of this sheet is written: ‘Did you throw away any paper lying around on which I am testing out my colours’. These sheets were considered till now as ‘watercolour palettes’; this inscription granted those artefacts the name of ‘colour tests’. 3 Blue as a medium Gustave Moreau bequeathed the contents of his studio; the museum now owns the artist’s materials as well as completed or preparatory works. Among them, a collection of paintings on a blue background that has never been exhibited before. Its uniqueness lies in being executed on blue cardboard found in a ware- house, onto which colours were generously applied.

Ébauche. Plantes marines No motif can be found among the works for this pour « Galatée » ? set, except on this sketch, a possible study for Oil on canvas; 45 × 54.8 cm marine plants for Galatée (1880, Paris, Musée Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau, d’Orsay). This sketch would therefore be closer Inv. 13211 to works from the last part of his career.

4 Falling short of the figurative Since the museum opened in 1903, some critics have considered the non-figurative works of Gustave Moreau to be, in fact, the premises of a finished work. This has been said many times of Jupiter et Sémélé (Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau), an example of his work as a history painter. To execute this work, with a very com- plex iconography, exhibited on the third floor, Moreau began by setting up surprisingly simplified composi- tions, in a narrow colour range. In many of the studies on display, the characters appear to be reduced to mere colour stains, mainly red, overlaid onto the coloured background. For other works, the link is less precise, Ébauche. Étude pour «Jupiter et Sémélé» and many of them still retaining some of their mystery. Oil on canvas; 40.7 × 32.8 cm Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau Cat. 1140

‘Look at the paintings upside down to fully appreciate the values since subject-matter, objects represented and appearance always tend to divert your attention’. Gustave Moreau 5 Landscape: value science The landscape is omnipresent in Gustave Moreau’s 5 history painting; very early on, he studied the landscapes f 6 of his predecessors, from Leonardo da Vinci to Claude Gellée, named le Lorrain after his birthplace. However, 7 it is very difficult to link many of his sketches to a style or identifiable iconography, except for one of them, Workshop, 3rd floor the preliminary work for Tomyris et Cyrus (Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau). What characterises these rapid set-ups is choosing in advance a dynamic that may be vertical or horizontal and whose elements block the perspective or overlap in an attempt to storm the composition – a formula often found in the exhibition’s more dramatic works. It seems to obey Moreau’s principle ‘to reduce all harmonies in paintings to monochrome graduations’.

Ébauche. « Thomyris et Cyrus » Many of Gustave Moreau’s exhibition paintings Oil on wood; 21 × 25 cm feature a backdrop dominated by rocks. Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau, Cat. 617 This background is found in many sketches in order to stall the composition. Moreau adds the characters in the final work.

6 Colour field painting In the margins of the landscapes, a small number of works seem to be the backdrop for interior scenes. Geometric shapes lead to an opening located more or less high up in the composition but almost always in the centre, and painted white. Only rarely can they be connected to specific works. Do they refer to ‘the extreme simplicity of coloured fields,’ which he said he admired in the Flemish masters?

We find this vast, wide-open space in Moreau’s history Ébauche. Intérieur painting, particularly in David exhibited in 1878 (Los Angeles, Oil on canvas; 45 × 38 cm Hammer Museum) and Pétrarque housed on the 3rd floor of the Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau, museum. All the details are eliminated, and only remain the Cat. 857 essential chromatic fields, a technique that would go on to influence the works of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. 7 ‘The magical effects of pure plastic art’ Linked to the generation of Romantic artists, Gustave Moreau is inhabited by that love of colour that he trans- mitted to his students, the founders of Fauvism. It is, as he himself said, pure ‘plastic singing’. In these works, the third dimension has totally disappeared. Since the 1960s some critics have also wanted to see him as the father of Abstraction. We do not know the intent of these works. There is nothing to indicate that Moreau deliberately wanted to produce an abstract work in the contemporary sense of the term. In fact, Moreau is above all, a practitioner, worker, experi- menter and not a theorist whose work is to put theory into practice. His paintings retain their mystery. They spring from this constant search for colour, material and emotional resonance that springs from either cold or warm colours.

‘Not having to adhere to representing reality exclusively, he wanted to embrace the beyond, translating the fleeting pageantry of the imagination into lasting colours. Instead of an impression of visible things, Moreau has rendered, as far as possible, the radiance of things we do not see [...]’. Arsène Alexandre, The Event, 1888

Ébauche Oil on canvas; 27 × 22 cm Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau, Cat. 1151 This work is one of twenty-two sketches kept in the ‘abstract cupboard’ on the ground floor of the museum. Its range of colours is close to that used for Galatée (1880, Paris, Musée d’Orsay). Gustave Moreau Towards reverie and the abstract Vers le songe et l’abstrait

By bequeathing the contents of his studio and his house to the French state to make it into a museum, Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) wanted to leave a record of his lifelong work as an artist.

In the heart of this sumptuous collection of over 25,000 works, the Musée Gustave Moreau speculated for years about the status of many non-figurative works kept there. Originally designated as ‘sketches’, these works went on to be described as ‘abstract’ during the twentieth century.

The scientific team that worked on the exhibition examined both paintings and watercolours, and raised Ébauche a number of questions. Oil on board; 55.5 × 45.1 cm Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau, Inv. 13212 Are these works preparatory sketches for figurative paintings? Are they pure abstractions? What is their relationship with the artist’s writings on art? Is Gustave Moreau a pioneer of abstraction? Were these works carefully thought through or executed randomly? What came after them? What information can we derive regarding the artist’s creative process?

Gustave Moreau, this champion of introspective painting, wants above all, as he himself wrote, to take us ‘towards reverie and the abstract’.

The exhibition, located in the gallery on the first floor and in the workshops on the second and third floors, will take the visitors to seven sections gathering nearly one hundred paintings and watercolours, some of them exhibited for the first time. Around the exhibition

Imaginary Tours – Drawing classes for adults Towards reverie and the abstract Held by Sophie Graverand Hosted by actors Pauline Caupenne and Grégor Daronian Dreams and the exhilaration of colour Thursday 15 November, Saturday 20 October 13 and 20 December 2018 and 8 December 2018 | 10:00 and 17 January 2019 | 19:00 Exploring the chromatic palette, from colour Exclusive evening visits to explore stain to staged elaboration. the exhibition after-hours. —— Duration: 1h Creating the work One price: 8€ Thursday 25 October 2018 | 18:00 Exploring the place of colour, chiaroscuro and graphism in staged elaboration. Guided tours : Moreau Thursdays Chiaroscuro and abstraction Saturday 17 November 2018 Gustave Moreau. Towards reverie and 19 January 2019 | 10:00 and the abstract Thursday 8 November 2018 | 19:00 Exploring balances between chiaroscuro, textures and materials, By Emmanuelle Macé. and staged elaboration. Guided tour of the exhibition. The museum —— possesses many non-figurative works. Over Duration: 2h30 time the viewer’s gaze on these enigmatic One price: 15€ per course + booking fee works has evolved. The exhibition enables us Register on billetreduc.com to raise questions about the status of these works, works that also inform us about the artist’s creative process. Chamber music concerts Moreau, lyrical or geometric? Concert by members of the Thursday 6 December 2018 – 1st part | 19:00 Orchestre de Paris Thursday 10 January 2019 Tuesday 20 November 2018 | 20:00 – 2nd part | 19:00 Théodore Gouvy, André Caplet, Par Dominique Lobstein. Claude Debussy, Reynaldo Hahn Guided tour of the exhibition. Although Moreau is not the only benchmark for the Ensemble Ouranos Concert Masters of abstraction, this visit will explain Tuesday 4 December 2018 | 20:00 how his experience with the plastic arts may Astor Piazzolla, György Ligeti, Karol Beffa, have influenced this multiform movement. Antonín Dvořák —— —— Duration: 1h Duration: 1h Full price: 8€ | Reduced price: 6€ One price: 15€ + booking fee Free for students with a student ID Tickets sold on billetreduc.com Exhibition catalogue Musée Gustave Moreau/Somogy éditions d’art co-publication 192 pages, 140 illustrations 29€ ISBN: 978-2-7572-1391-9

The exhibition catalogue brings together the essays of Marie-Cécile Forest, Cécile Debray, Dario Gamboni, Rémi Labrusse, Emmanuelle Macé, Véronique Sorano Stedman.

Combined ticket Partnerships with the Musée National During the eight days following your visit to the Jean-Jacques Henner Musée Gustave Moreau, you are entitled to a reduced Full price: 9€ | Reduced price: 7€ price ticket to our partner museums: Musée national des Arts asiatiques-Guimet, Musée de la Vie romantique, Musée d’Orsay, Palais Garnier. Useful Information

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Musée national Gustave Moreau 14, rue de La Rochefoucauld 75009 Paris Open every day except Tuesday from 10:00 to 17:15. Metro: Line 12, Trinité or Saint-Georges Bus: 26 | 32 | 43 | 67 | 68 | 74 Tel: 01 48 74 38 50 [email protected] Full price: 7€ | Reduced price: 5€ Free every first Sunday of the month, for young people under 18, EU nationals under 26 and for Paris Museum Pass holders.

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Photo credits: © RMN-GP /Franck Raux : cover, section 1g, 2d, 3, introduction / Tony Querrec : section 2g / René-Gabriel Ojéda : section 1d, 5, 6 / Christian Jean : section 4, 7 • © Hartl-Meyer : museum view Graphic Design: Ursula Held

The exhibition received support from the Friends of the Gustave Moreau Museum Society.

In partnership with